


The Escapist

by slightlyjillian



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-24
Updated: 2010-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-06 16:18:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlyjillian/pseuds/slightlyjillian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-EW, <i>She had never been able to hold onto either of them for long.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Escapist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alithea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alithea/gifts).



> written for _stoic_rose_. she pointed out how hard it was to plausibly put Sally with Une, so... y'know, I had to _try_.

The grey of the Italian sand matched the cool tongue of silver water and the low clouds on the horizon hiding away the sunset. As long as she didn't turn around, then she wouldn't have to see the ghosts of emptied chairs or the crinkles of a well used wedding aisle. She couldn't say it was better to remember them as they were in bright sunshine with full leaves on the trees and halos of light over every head like so many angels gathered together. Somewhere between the two stayed a reality she relived every night as she put her head near a pillow.

The office had been tense as she prepared to leave for Maiori. Someone had realized the date even if she'd neglected to share the details of her destination. Someone recognized the timing of her requested leave from overseeing all duties assigned to the Preventers. Perhaps it had been Heero Yuy, her somber, diligent second-in-command who had cautioned the rest not to wish her a bon voyage. One year distant from that day, and no one mentioned so much as a detail of those events around her. Conversations quickly ended. Eyes became fixed onto interesting carpet patterns.

That absolute silence must have taken some doing. Relena alone had been the public spokesperson for the whole ordeal. Hours of coverage. Documentaries. Speculation. Gatherings and memorials. Endearments and slander. During the first few months, the press had overwhelmed the office lines so that even essential calls were choked out until Duo Maxwell had glibly sabotaged the entire power grid for the city.

"Dorothy would have appreciated it," he had remarked, fingers shaking in the dim light of his briefly lit cigarette.

They had barely three days of residual happiness. The still celebrating staff had shrugged off jet lag, coming back to office halls littered with streamers, confetti and deflated balloons. Remnants of a ridiculous bachelorette party. Laughing as they had picked up the empty bottles of Dos Equis.

Remembering.

"He likes traditional." Dorothy had pursed her lips, wincing as she tried to swallow. "I can learn to like this."

"There is nothing traditional about you, Dots. Moreover, I have no idea who in his right mind would drink this stuff." Duo had crashed the all-girls party and, contrary to his boasting, drank enough of the antiquated beer to validate the bridegroom's questionable tastes.

"Why Maiori?" They had asked.

Dorothy had become still, lowering her brows to an expression of seldom seen melancholy. "Nicky was held up in a Maiori checkpoint when he was on route to Corsica. Just long enough that he missed..." She wrapped her lips around the Dos Equis bottle tipping it back to drain an imaginary last swallow. She wiped her mouth, then smiled, "Some places are just lucky."

Their lucky place, the beaches of Maiori, where for a modest fee two of Une's employees, her soldiers, her friends, two of the people who had dared to love her during the aftermath of her greatest loss, had decided to get married. Made plans to retire and start a new life together.

That day not a cloud was in the sky.

"Don't let her boss you around." Une had caught Nichol's sleeve pulling him toward her and finding the broadest, most sincere happiness in his smile. Her stomach had fluttered as if full of awakened, trapped butterflies. The sunset scattering warm light over the beach as freely as the couple's obvious affection.

"We both know that's not what you mean to say. And thank you." He'd playfully slugged her arm making Une let go of him. She had never been able to hold onto either of them for long.

Still, if she'd known then that she would never see either of them again. (That she would never hold either of them again.) She wouldn't have walked away from the beach and spent the rest of the evening knocking back drinks at the Bar Pineta.

"I can't decide if you're more courageous than the rest of us. Or more stupid."

The voice pierced into Une's present and the cold of the water revealed itself to have caught her ankles like braces. She cautiously tested her toes, delaying before accepting that her solitude was irreversibly broken.

"How did you get access?" The voice persisted.

_She doesn't let anyone go,_ Une thought angrily. Reached up with one finger to better settle the weight of the glasses across her nose, she lifted her feet making to face the interloper. For the distance between the shoreline and the ghostly boardwalk, Sally Po must have shouted to be heard, although the textures of her tone never seemed elevated.

"I'm surprised you're alone here. Today." Sally casually lifted herself over the fence, then briefly sat on the edge of the concrete before sliding down to the beach. She never stopped moving, getting closer to Une.

"I didn't invite anyone to join me so I could be alone." Une crossed her arms establishing a small distance, knowing that no movement would keep the medical officer from physically approaching.

"Well, I know that." Sally's lips quirked in a smile. "But for this place, it's only been a year. I would have expected some meddlesome journalist to have set up with cameras and local witnesses. They made quite a spectacle of our friends untimely end." She said the last words without taking her eyes from Une. Une refused to drop the challenging stare.

Sally continued, "Although, I'm sure someone probably made arrangements for you. They all did, and have, and will again." Tossing her head back to take in a deep breath of the Mediterranean, Sally sighed heavily. "I'm sure that you're feeling all beat up about losing everyone that you love, but you have realized there's more to this, haven't you?"

"I suppose you're going to tell me." Une resented the petulant sound of her unused voice.

"That's right. I'll tell you, because you need to hear it. Those two were the only ones to even dare to do exactly what you explicitly told them not to." Sally pressed forward, "Get close."

Une's face slowly filled with heat like the flaring of a scratched, raw sunburn. "How dare you?"

Sally set her fingers against her chin. Her lips slightly parted as if caught off guard for the first time in her life, and she found it amusing. "I wonder what you mean by that?"

Une scowled. The flesh of her lips cracked, but she pressed them together without the luxury of wetting them. The beach spread out to both sides dark and empty. The memories of that day overwritten by the chilly march of nature always continuing without the people who had meant everything to her.

"They were my friends, too." Sally softened somewhat. Une knew that the other woman was the sort to adopt damaged people. Sally was their beloved physician, their laughter and their never-ending heartbeat. Which was why Une regularly forgot her scheduled physicals and left the conversation when her staff started to swap stories about their amazing tried-in-the-jungle doctor. Even Chang Wufei, who habitually underperformed in his mission documentation, never missed a session with Sally or her staff.

Une remembered the flush only she could bring to Nichol's cheeks. Or the delicate stammer when Dorothy reached a rare moment of being emotionally flustered. Une never liked to share. She forced out the full weight of everything she'd left unconfessed in three words, "I loved them."

Sally snorted, "Okay, you can stay here and punish yourself. Or you can come with me and, well, we'll see who punishes who."

Une shook her head.

"Put your shoes back on," Sally ordered, slipping into a persona Une never expected from the favored officer. The shadows hid more of Sally's features as she began to turn back. "I don't want to be your friend. I want a drink. So take me wherever it was that you went that night."

...

Treize had learned their names. Une barely remembered if the commander bringing her reports to sign was the same from day to day.

She'd put Mariemia is boarding school just as much because of the scholarship opportunities as it enabled Une to find a smile that would last long enough for their brief holidays together.

Dorothy had volunteered to call when she and Nichol made it to the Lunar station in transit to their new homestead on Terra 2 even when Une hadn't asked for a promise.

She'd received their transmission a full day after the news broke of the terrorist attack on the moon. And deleted it, without hesitation, unwatched.

They had deserved better than her which was why they were with each other.

Une told Sally none of these things as they sat side by side in the Bar Pineta. Instead, she leaned forward onto her elbows and talked into her glass, "We're close to catching those bastards. Anti-settlement bastards killing innocent pioneers: farmers, cowboys, carpenters and damn metal workers."

Sally's voice drifted around Une's space without, any longer, seeming intrusive. "Nichol was good at that."

"Damn good." Une lifted the glass, swiveling the small pool of droplets, wanting to burn out her throat, but only remembering how silly Dorothy had looked when she'd pretended to drink the same damn beer the whole night at her party.

"Get her some more," Sally was saying to the bartender. "I'm the one driving the motorbike."

...

Later as she retched on her hands and knees along the street, Une couldn't shrug away the cool hand pressed along her brow, lifting back the heavy curtain of bangs that had otherwise stuck fast in the surging sweat. Nearby the motorbike settled into a constant rumble as it waited for them to finish their journey. An offended alley cat hissed at the women before taking off in a dark streak.

"You can hate me later," Sally spoke evenly. "But even this doesn't make us friends."

...

Une woke up in a small, limestone white villa thirty minutes from Merida in Mexico. The crackle of the morning heat rippled over her skin like electrical currents reviving her long rusted circuits. She'd stayed up late reading the reports as they came into her system. Duo had verified the location. Heero had strategically placed the teams. Even Trowa Barton had returned from his resolved infiltration duties on colony 2.7 in order to participate in the final hammer drop on the Supreme Dynasty kingpin, the single person who had picked the time and the place of the illegal organization's first attack.

She got dressed, stopping periodically to skim the updates as they pinged through her equipment. She reset her mobile device to receive all incoming transmissions and ordered her breakfast in the lush open air dining area. The tea provided to her was curiously smokey in flavor and tasted exceptionally delicious on her palate. She savored it as it rolled over her tongue.

Treize had kept birds. Une had kept an empty cage. Perhaps she better understood the difference between them now. Soon, very soon, she would do something to make all her haunting ghosts laugh.

Responding to the sound, she keyed in her code to read the last report. Then she adjusted the setting to make a call.

"Sally?" Une confirmed the doctor was listening. Then taking a shaky breath, she added, "You were right about me."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Bottles &amp; Bones](https://archiveofourown.org/works/57063) by [Alithea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alithea/pseuds/Alithea)




End file.
